The Court of International Trade released its questions ahead of March 19 oral arguments in a case on the 2019-21 review of the antidumping duty order on Indian quartz countertops. Judge Mark Barnett asked a host of questions pertaining to the Commerce Department's filing deadlines (Cambria Co. v. United States, CIT # 23-00007).
The Court of International Trade on March 11 sustained the Commerce Department's remand results excluding importer Crane Resistoflex's ductile iron lap joint flanges from the antidumping duty order on pipe fittings from China. Judge Timothy Stanceu previously remanded the scope ruling on the grounds that it wasn't in a form that could be sustained by the court. Commerce said a Federal Register notice will be published stating that Crane's flanges are outside the order's scope.
In oral arguments March 7, Court of International Trade Judge Timothy Reif heard the government’s and exporters’ arguments in a case regarding an administrative review on multilayered wood flooring from China. The review’s final results were based on the calculated rate of only one respondent after it was discovered selection of the other was based on an error by the Commerce Department (Jiangsu Senmao Bamboo and Wood Industry Co. v. U.S., CIT # 20-03885).
The following lawsuit was filed recently at the Court of International Trade:
The U.S. will appeal a January Court of International Trade decision upholding the International Trade Commission's affirmative injury finding on mattresses from a host of countries. The government will take the case to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, where it likely will be consolidated with exporter CVB's appeal of the same decision (see 2402160027). In its decision, the trade court found errors in the ITC's assessment of whether the market industry is segmented, but it still sustained the affirmative injury finding due to the "harmless error" principle (see 2312200070) (CVB v. U.S., CIT # 21-00288).
U.S. importer CVB filed a complaint March 8 at the Court of International Trade claiming that the Commerce Department wrongly excluded importer Zinus' metal and wood platform beds from the antidumping duty order on wooden bedroom furniture from China (CVB v. U.S., CIT # 24-00036).
The Court of International Trade in an opinion made public March 8 sent back the Commerce Department's model matching methodology in the antidumping duty investigation on superabsorbent polymers (SAP) from South Korea. Judge Thomas Aquilino said that the agency didn't justify the methodology with sufficient evidence and that it used unverified data from exporter LG Chem while also failing to address evidence from the AD petitioner that the methodology allowed for LG Chem to manipulate its AD margin.
A petitioner in antidumping and countervailing duty cases on chassis from China that later began to import vehicle chassis from Vietnam said the Commerce Department was misapplying the scope of its orders on Chinese chassis from China that it itself had requested (Pitts Enterprises, Inc. v. U.S., CIT # 24-00030).
Exporters Juancheng Kangtai Chemical Co. and Heze Huayi Chemical Co. filed a complaint on March 6 at the Court of International Trade to contest the Commerce Department's consideration of Romania as a surrogate country in the 2021-22 review of the antidumping duty order on chlorinated isocyanurates from China (Juancheng Kangtai Chemical Co. v. United States, CIT # 24-00026).
Judges at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit during a March 7 oral argument prodded various statutory interpretations of U.S. countervailing duty law as it pertains to finding whether demand for a good is "substantially dependent" on an upstream product for purposes of assigning countervailing duties. If substantial dependence is established, Commerce may attribute subsidies to a raw agricultural grower to a later stage producer.